The Benefits Of Making Your Own Laundry Detergent

Back in April, we talked about making your own laundry detergent. Gather washing soda, grated bar soap, borax and boiling water and you can avoid the store-bought stuff. Whether or not it’s worth making the product yourself is up for debate.

Ultra-frugal blogger Girl with the Red Balloon put the practice to the test and found that the savings was paltry, knocking only $23.88 a year off her laundry soap-buying budget. She spent only 33 minutes making the soap, and invested $8.57 in ingredients.

Despite the unremarkable impact on her finances, the writer finds soap-making to be worth it because it lacks those nauseating fragrances manufacturers insert into their products and it doesn’t irritate her skin. It’s also worth noting that large families who do laundry constantly will find laundry soap-making more lucrative.

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It might be a fun project to do with kids for science, but I can buy detergent from Meijer in huge buckets and already save a lot off name brand. I have NEVER used name brand detergent. I don’t think Tide is any different than the stuff I use.

why don’t you trust them? Its just laundry detergent…you’re not ingesting it or anything haha. I guess if you’re really sensitive to certain chemicals or something then it might matter…but honestly the $5 bottle of detergent I use cleans my clothes just as well as the $15 bottle of Tide or something.

I never touch Tide either and I can’t understand why people would pay $7 or so for a small bottle, when the local grocery store routinely runs Arm & Hammer or other sub-name brands for $1.99 for the same amount. I don’t roll around in mud or grass, but my clothes still come out clean and smelling fresh.

When I was about 7 years old, I did a science experiment on laundry detergent to determine which of the name brands was the best. Tide won hands down at stain removing. This was back in the 80’s. Not sure if it is still true. Now, I just make sure to use Zout stain remover and whatever detergent is in the house.

Costco has Boulder Detergent, which is super Eco-tree-hugger and hypoallergenic, and reasonably inexpensive. Though maybe that’s only carried by the location here near Boulder.

Granted, I’m not sure it actually does anything, either. I’ve had that problem with some of the “*-free” detergents I’ve purchased in the past, which I thought would be easier on my septic system than the more standard ones like Tide and Cheer.

I’ve been doing this for over a year. I’ve gotten it down to about 20 minutes of prep time to make enough to last for about two months and it works great. My clothes just smell clean without any extra fragrances and it’s still way cheaper than the name brand stuff.

when I was at university I was working multiple jobs and only had 2-3 hours spare a week. I wouldn’t spend those few hours I could sit and read, catch up on sleep, etc. doing anything for money. It had to be something to help relieve the stress.

I used to make that calculation when I was a work-all-you-want contractor, and it worked well. For salaried folks, especially those in situations where taking a second job isn’t a good idea, the math is more complex than that.

Or maybe it’s less complex: When I’m at home, I’m not making money. What I make during the day is irrelevant — $191.94 saved is $191.94 earned.

(That said, I use Charlie’s Soap, which is super cheap, comes in a teeny tiny container, and confers the same health and environmental benefits as homemade detergent, so I am not planning to mess with this stuff.)

I have brothers and sisters with lots of kids who do a “crap ton” of laundry and so it would be worth their while. I live alone and I am 1/4 of the way through my last batch of laundry detergent (3.5 gallons) and like the fact my material cost is about $.70 gal. And I do not have the same skin issues with my detergent that I do with commercially manufactured stuff.

It would be similar to people who brew their own wine or beer when they could buy cheaper wine or beer. Sometimes it is an issue of quality, sometimes an issue of a challenge, sometimes an issue of just liking to do it. There are people who bake their own bread, sew their own clothes, or catch their own fish.

I am looking forward to my next batch of laundry detergent to try different ratios of ingredients and a different bar of soap. Maybe I’ll do a couple of loads this weekend to get me a little closer.

Apparently, “Girl with the Red Balloon” has never heard of Tide Free & Gentile, All Free & Clear, Era Free, Cheer Free & Gentile, or any of the store-brand “Free” detergents that don’t have dyes and perfumes, yet do have the stain-fighting enzymes that the home-made stuff is lacking.

My wife and I have been using this recipe for the better part of the year. We find it works very well for our family. None of us have allergies and don’t really have skin sensitivities. We like the simplicity and the control it gives us.
My wife stays at home and likes to make things for a productive household. This gives her a way to do that and it’s not all that complicated. We also make our own dish detergent. It saves us a bit and she’s happy.

I live in an apartment building, so making my own laundry detergent would be stupid. How would it lug it to the laundry room?

My system takes care of that AND the stupid dyes and smells: All Small & Mighty. It’s 3x concentrated, so it’s in a tiny bottle. And it’s available in a dye- and fragrance-free version. And it only costs about $4 per 32-load bottle!

Look folks, P&G, Unilever, etc. do not have extensive research labs and large teams of chemists on staff solely dedicated to coming up with new combinations of fragrances. All those hi-tech syndets, enzymes, phosphate substitutes, etc. are in there for a reason.

Yes, soda, soap, and borax will get most of the grunge out and leave your clothes smelling fresh. But it won’t work on many stains, is rather poor at preventing long-term sebum staining (a.k.a. ring around the collar), and contains no brighteners or bleach substitutes to help preserve/enhance color.

We made our own for a while, and I didn’t recall it being that expensive, however, my wife made a mistake that did end up costing us. She used our calphalon hard anodized stock pot to make a batch (I had used our older aluminum pan that was smaller) and it took the coating off ruining an $80 pot (we had gotten it on sale so we didn’t pay that much, but replacing will cost that much)

How did she spend $191 on ingredients?? I only spent about $20 on ingredients–$8 for washing soda, $9 for borax, $1 for soap–and it made me 25 or 30 gallons of soap. Making a batch takes me half an hour, and I make two 5-gallon batches (one for me and one for my mom) every 6 or 8 months.

Anyway, I’m a huge fan of the homemade detergent. I have a husband who’s a mechanic, and a toddler, so we go through a LOT of laundry soap!

On a similar note, anybody who is NOT happy about the federal ban on TSP in dish detergent can add their own. Buy a box of it at Home Depot for a few bucks, and it last forever. My dishes are always spotless no matter what detergent I use. And for those who are worried about it’s environmental impacts, it is used in all kinds of things. Including food.

I’m one of the cheapest, er frugalist, persons I know. I will not make laundry detergent. I buy it on sale, in bulk, and will even score some at our neighborhood plastic recycling center, but I am not going to make detergent. I love the smell of Gain tropical (whatever the green stuff is) and I use it sparingly on my work clothes.

Or don’t use any at all! Laundry detergent is a relatively NEW thing. 50 years or so. Before that people got their laundry clean with water and scrubbing. I have cut WAY back on the amount I use and I find my clothes are just as clean and LAST LONGER. Which makes me wonder if the detergents are actually weakening the fabric fibers. I use less than 1/4 of the recommended amount and my clothes come out clean, fresh and smell like…..water.

No, people did not get their clothes clean with just water and scrubbing. Soap, in some form or another, has always been used to clean clothes, going back centuries. (My Mom, a historian specializing in mid 19th-century America, even has a whole book about nothing but laundry.) And modern laundry detergents have way more than just soap… (enzymes, brighteners, bleach substitutes, phosphate substitutes, etc.)

Water simply does not clean any substance containing oil. (Oil and water don’t mix, remember?) This includes sebum, the yellowish excretions from your skin that keep it moist, and also stain whites yellow. If you tried to clean your clothes with only water, it’s doubtful you’d even get them smelling fresh, much less keeping them clean-looking. Soap also helps to hold solids (like dirt) in suspension, keeping them from clinging to your clothes, but the syndets used in modern detergents are much better at it than soap is.

See my later response above: We most certainly did NOT use “water and scrubbing” to clean clothes prior to syndets. A variety of chemicals beyond soap (which, by the way, you failed to mention in your original post) have been used for centuries to clean clothes: potash lye, stale urine, dyes, etc.

Specific “Laundry Soaps” are new because we discovered modern chemistry. Modern synthetic detergents (a.k.a syndets) are WAY more effective than just ground-up common soap. Even when you add Borax and Washing Soda to that soap, it still doesn’t even approach the grunge-fighting abilities of any half-way decent detergent. We now use syndets for most things soap used to be used for: shampoo, dish soap, hand soap, even many bar soap now sold is made of syndets instead of Sodium Tallowate. It’s not because there has been some major run on Tallow (rendered beef fat; the fat source for most pre-modern American soaps, and still used in Ivory, among others); it’s because the syndets simply work better. They clean better, are gentler on skin, rinse cleaner, etc.

Summary:
mid-19th-century laundry involved:
Lye for most stains (and you thought Tide was harsh… imagine scrubbing your clothes with Draino!) Clay or Chalk to try at grease stains. (Fun fact, the Romans used stale urine (converts into Ammonia when left out) for stains.)
A 1-2 day soak in soap
Scrubbing in soap, involving repeated scrubbing and wringing
Boiling the clothes to get them rinsed; soap doesn’t dissolve well in cold water.
A 2nd rinse.
Air drying… the sun helped to bleach the white clothes a little bit, since they didn’t have Clorox.

I alternate between ‘free’ (as in no dyes or fragrances) detergent and soap, every other load, using a vegetable peeler to add the soap. Actual soap, mind you: coconut oil, water, and lye, made with 20% superfat.

Detergent works for many stains, but tends to leave either a bit of itself, or maybe some gummy stuff that should have been washed away, on the fabric, which just doesn’t feel right after a few loads, and then that tends to attract lint and pet hair. Yuck.

I’m not too sure about saving much money, though. Detergents are affordable at warehouse type stores, such as Sam’s and Costco, and at discount stores, and are an item where you can actually save quite a bit with coupons. Meanwhile, the custom-made detergent is labor intensive, and you can also easily get some washing soda, borax, or soap to help out every now and then for when your detergent may not be quite good enough.

Finally, laundry detergents are made to keep your clothes from staining from your own sweat, oils, and waxes, which home-made detergents are not likely to be quite as good at. If you are using the recommended amount of detergent in every load, you are probably wasting quite a bit of it. Save the line on the cap (or spoon) for loads with major stains.

Although I normally favor store brands to save money, I stick with Tide for laundry. If you are a Consumer Reports subscriber, check the laundry detergent ratings – there is a big difference in cleaning power. Blowing an extra 20 cents per washload on Tide is more economical than trashing a $20 shirt because a stain won’t come out.

If you want to save and avoid perfumes, ixnay the Downey and use white vinegar in the fabric softener dispenser. It softens fabrics by removing detergent residue in the rinse cycle at under $2/gallon.